Jason Lindner

Social media is an area that is being supplemented greatly by AI. There are settings on various platforms like HubSpot, Sprout Social and others that automatically create social posts that are generated from the url that is pasted into the scheduler. This saves our social media managers time in drafting the post because they can skip to the editing phase.

Similarly, AI in the analytics reported is also very helpful. When using Hootsuite’s scheduler, it generates the recommended times and days to post based on the behavior of your audience recently. I don’t think AI will be replacing social media manager jobs, but will instead enhance their productivity and optimization.

I love this POV. People are so quick to “jump to the end” about AI replacing something entirely, but the reality for most technology is the value it can give us in “nudging” something forward. I am not a creative, but I know the “where do we start” ideation process can be extremely time-consuming for any effort. Using AI to short-cut “why not try these” seems both effective (no one expects them to be fully polished) and efficient (Pencil AI seems to be a lot less effort, and fewer billable hours, than an agency brainstorm).

My POV is that we get lost on owning the “entire” idea. The feedback that there’s nothing original anymore (at least in entertainment) ignores the innovation that can come from uncovering and exploring an unexpected nuance in the source material. I doubt AI will be creating entirely original works any time soon (since it’s drawing on training materials, or only what it’s “seen”), but in our era of recycling and rebooting ideas, Pencil AI may be the optimal way to source inspiration from all the “parts” available and allow human to “see” how to make it into something more than the sum in the algorithms output.

On a similar vein, you all may want to look Google’s Quick Draw. The ability to discern the intent of the crudest drawings in a very short period of time is uncanny.

https://quickdraw.withgoogle.com/

Hi Jason,

This is so interesting. I have never heard about this short film but now I’m curious about it. I’m not entirely surprised that it’s nonsensical. Technology will always be flawed like the humans that have created it. When technology fails, and it will, a human will always have to be there to fix it. So while technology may take some jobs, but it can’t replace all of them. Even when I’m doing self check out, I’m always the unlucky person that has some sort of weird glitch that requires a human to come and fix.

I do agree that the simple ads created by Pencil look nice, but good marketing makes us feel something. And only humans who experience those emotions, unlike AI, can elicit them.

Hey Jason,
This is such a great post. I think I have to agree with Alexis when she says that her biggest fear if that all of this AI technology is eventually going to take over our jobs and our lives. I don’t know really know if this AI technology will be a good fit for our future. Although this pencil is so interesting and would be such a cool thing to use everyday, I do not think that a robot is going to be better at marketing than humans. We get connected to a product from the marketing and that makes us feel something. Im my opinion, I would not feel any emotions from this AI technology taking over marketing.

Hi Jason,

Strategic Marketing + Communications member here who is not offended! I personally have never experimented with pencil AI, but think it’s a unique concept that will have implications for the creative marketing industry moving forward. I’m curious to see once this grows in popularity how it might change processes within my department in the future. I personally don’t see it completely surpassing humans because having institutional and foundational knowledge is an essential part of marketing that a pencil AI simply does not possess. I could, however, see it being used as a substitute for easier projects though that teams might not have the capacity to work on. As a stratcomm employee, I definitely want to learn more about the specifics of this tool as I work on enrollment materials, so maybe it’s time I check out another LinkedIn learning course.